About Registered Organization Vocabulary

Abstract

The Core Business Vocabulary is a simplified, reusable and extensible data model that captures the fundamental characteristics of a legal entity, e.g. the legal name, the activity, address, etc.

Description

e-Government Core Vocabularies are the starting point for developing interoperable eGovernment systems, as they allows mappings with existing data models. This supports Public Administrations in attaining cross-border and cross-sector interoperability. Please refer to the eGovernment Core Vocabularies paper on the approach and benefits of Core Concepts for further background.

This is a vocabulary for describing organizations that have gained legal entity status through a formal registration process, typically in a national or regional register. It focuses solely on such organizations and excludes natural persons, virtual organizations and other types of legal entity or 'agent' that are able to act.

In describing businesses, the working group focused solely on legal entities, that is, trading bodies that are formally registered with the relevant authority and that appear in business registers. This excludes sole traders, virtual organisations and other types of 'agent' that are able to do business.

Since 8 January 2013, an RDF syntax of the Core Business Vocabulary has been formally published on the W3C standards track. It has been revised and renamed into Registered Organization Vocabulary (RegOrg).

Purpose

The Registered Organization Vocabulary includes a minimal number of classes and properties that are designed to capture the typical details recorded by business registers and thereby facilitate information exchange between them, although there is significant variation between business registers in what they record and publish.

Benefits

Use of the eGovernment Core Vocabularies supports public administrations in their efforts towards developing interoperable eGovernment systems.

Development and maintenance process

The applicable policy regarding the development and maintenance process of the Core Criterion and Core Evidence Vocabulary is available here.

The Core Business Vocabulary is one of the three Core Vocabularies that have been developed in the context of Action 1.1 of the ISA Programme. The specification is developed by a multi disciplinary Working Group, with a total of 69 people from 22 countries, 19 EU and 3 non-EU countries (USA, South-Africa, Norway), and several EU Institutions.